Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 26/8/2011: Official 20th Anniversary of Linux, Blankfein (Goldman Sachs CEO) Allegedly Might Face Prison



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Hardware



  • Security



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • General Electric's Jim Cramer Heads to Midwest to Cheerlead for Fracking
      Today, CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer's "Invest in America" series will take the show to a seemingly unlikely locale. The crew will head to a place many would consider the middle of nowhere -- the state of North Dakota.


    • Plain Talk: Gore deplores BS skewing climate debate
      It has been nearly two years now since Wendell Potter, the former public relations expert for two of the nation’s largest health insurers, wrote the book “Deadly Spin,” exposing the misleading advertising campaigns and dirty tricks that insurance companies have used to try to scuttle meaningful health care reform.

      In the book Potter, who is now a senior fellow at the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy, revealed that the health insurance industry has been using many of the same tactics and, indeed, some of the same people who successfully fought off tobacco regulation for decades. Tobacco interests used doctors and other medical “experts” to discredit the research that found tobacco causes cancer and numerous other diseases in not just smokers, but people around them.






  • Finance

    • Cameron and Osborne did the Swiss tax deal to support tax evasion - there's no other explanation
      The UK – Swiss tax deal does not meet with my approval, as some will have noticed. The deal is outlined here. My objections are littered through the blogs preceding this one. But let’s stand back for a moment and consider why the UK have done this deal – uniquely (because it seems unlikely that the supposedly similar German one will get parliamentary approval and so will not happen).


    • Under Fire, Goldman Sachs CEO Hires Top-Notch Attorney
      Goldman Sachs’ shares nosedived nearly 5% after it confirmed that its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, has hired Reid Weingarten, a high-profile Washington, D.C., defense attorney to defend the embattled executive in connection with the Department of Justice’s inquiry into Blankfein and other firm officials.

      The Justice probe is looking into findings in a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations which alleges Goldman Sachs (GS) executives misled Congress and investors about its mortgage-backed securities deals.


    • Could Blankfein Face Prison?
      The Goldman Sachs CEO didn’t get a big-time criminal-defense lawyer because he’s worried about an SEC wrist slap—there’s a real possibility of doing time, says former Goldman managing director Nomi Prins.


    • Job Creation and America's Future
      Right at the beginning the report hits us in the face with a few statistics highlighted in big text that succinctly capture the job picture in 2011: US jobs have declined by 7 million since December 2007; 20% of men are not working today, up from 7% in 1970; there has been a 23% drop in new business creation since 2007; the jobless recovery is projected to last 60 months; 10% of Americans move annually, down from 20% in 1985.


    • Revealed: Former Goldman Sachs VP Turned Issa Staffer Supervised Scheduling Of Elizabeth Warren Incident (Think Progress)
      Last week, ThinkProgress revealed that Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) hired Peter Haller, a former Goldman Sachs vice president, as one of his top aides. Haller, who adopted his mother's maiden name in 2008 and had escaped public scrutiny until now, coordinated an Oversight Committee letter to regulators demanding that they justify new Dodd-Frank rules impacting investment banks like his old employer, Goldman Sachs. After publication of our story, the Project on Government Oversight discovered more of Haller's Oversight Committee letters, again on issues directly related to Goldman Sachs.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Plastic Bag Manufacturers Edit California Textbooks
      The American Chemistry Council (ACC), a lobbying group representing plastic bag manufacturers, successfully convinced the California Department of Education to rewrite its environmental textbooks and teachers' guides to include positive statements about plastic grocery bags.


    • Profit Motive Underlies Outbreak of Immigration Bills
      July 29 marked the one-year anniversary of Arizona's controversial immigration law, a year that has seen similar anti-immigrant bills emerge across the country. Thanks to the release of over 800 pieces of "model legislation" by the Center for Media and Democracy, we can now pinpoint the source of the outbreak to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a bill factory for legislation that benefits the bottom line of its corporate members. While it has been reported that more immigrants behind bars means more income for ALEC member Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), less discussed has been how immigrant detention benefits commercial bail-bond agencies, an industry represented in ALEC through the American Bail Coalition.






Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Staff Explains How Microsoft Swindled Employees and Avoided Paying Out Severance Pay (Microsoft Hasn't Much Money Left in the Bank)
This is a classic way to avoid paying workers
Techrights Should be Even Faster Now
We're now better off
Richard Stallman (RMS) Gave 3 Talks in India in Less Than a Week
In India this month we've not seen a single negative comment about RMS
Microsoft Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay Reported Hours After Microsoft Reported Weak Numbers and Microsoft Stock Fell
Microsoft has a bloodbath this month
Another Slew of Fake Articles About 'Linux' and 'Security' From Brittany Day at linuxsecurity.com (Spamfarm/Slopfarm)
linuxsecurity.com is basically a pariah and parasite. It lessens the incentive to write real articles about "Linux" by generating fake ones to outrank the originals.
 
Links 31/01/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Microsoft, Sweden Again Fails to Protect Critics of Violence
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux" and More (Latest Roundup Featuring BetaNews, Janus Atienza, and Brittany Day From Guardian Digital, Inc)
LLM slop season
"Not one of us" by Dr. Andy Farnell
Elon Musk has brought embarrassment to nerds and technologists
Gemini Links 31/01/2025: "Bulletin Buble" and "Why Blog?"
Links for the day
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Pay Off: Vastly Faster Sites, Much Smaller Hosting Bills
success story for SSGs
Of Note: Linux Foundation Has Already Let Linux.com Rot for About 4 Months (No Activity)
there's no campaign aside from marketing spam there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 30, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, January 30, 2025
Indian Data Biases statCounter For or Against "Linux"
In statCounter, the GNU/Linux increases and decreases are deeply tied to what it does with data collected in India
The Corporate Media Pretends That Facebook ("Meta") Has Performed Well, But Its Debt Doubles Every 2 Years Despite Mass Layoffs
That same media also helps parrot misleading financial claims
Microsoft's Debt Surged by More Than 6,000,000,000 Dollars in Just 3 Months
numbers released hours ago
The Sheer Irony of Microsoft Proxy Accusing Others of 'Stealing'
Wherever DeepSick's data came from, Microsoft (or its proxy) is in no position to issue criticism.
The Difference a Decade (and GAFAM Money) Makes
Credibility cannot be purchased
[Meme] The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Critics Because Its Message is Effective
Applying to others the same standards one is willing to violate?
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised $422,000 (Another $22k in the Two Weeks After Campaign Ended), Proving That Truth and Justice Tend to Find a Way
10,000+ dollars a week even without campaigning for more funds
Faking Revenue Increase by Buying Your Own Products and Services (Through Scams and Scammers Like Scam Altman)
Is this what society deserves? Media that instead of exposing corruption has chosen to participate in it and profit from it?
Links 30/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Causes Deaths, FBI Seizes Domains
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Action vs Inaction, Gopherholes, and More
Links for the day
Links 30/01/2025: Microsoft Wants Convicted Felon to Give Fentanylware (TikTok) to It (After Making a Phonecall Asking for That in 2019), "Moving Away From Google's Ecosystem"
Links for the day
Jack M. Germain (LinuxInsider) Seems to Have Turned to LLM Slop, Graphics Slop, and B2B SPAM
LinuxInsider is barely active anymore
Links 30/01/2025: Amazon Layoffs and DeepSeek Panic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Chaos Reigns, E-mail, Searching
Links for the day
IBM: Many Thousands of Layoffs in 2025
If 2025 is expected to be the same, then perhaps about 20,000 IBM workers will no longer be there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Google: Your Only Option is Google YouTube (Coming Soon: Mandatory DRM and Attestation?)
Digital Restrictions (DRM) to follow? Only for "approved" (attestation) browsers?
Mastodon Was Always Biased (Just Like Twitter After Abandoning Chronological and Neutral Timelines in Order to Become More Like Facebook)
So bury-brigading and click-farming control what people see
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Falls to Only 0.4% of the Total in Geminispace
Geminispace does not need to outsource trust
The Munich-Based EPO is Still Using a Platform That Promotes the Far Right and Rehabilitates Nazism
Active Twitter account
Links 29/01/2025: Dismantling Public Health in the US, Air Busan Plane Up in Flames (South Korea's Air Disasters Streak)
Links for the day
Announcements and Administrivia
This week we're going out for two days in a row to celebrate an achievement that's very respectable
Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Japan, GTD, and More
Links for the day
Sir, Yes, Sir. The Life of EPO Patent Examiners.
If working for the EPO makes it harder to sleep at night, take action
How the EPO Pressures Staff Into Minting More Monopolies (Patents), Even Illegal Ones That Harm Europe and Ultimately Dismantle the Rule of Law
insights into the pressure examiners are under
LLM Slop Machines Are Not a Win for "Open Source" and If They Get Cheaper, It's Even Worse
If some program that claims to be "Open Source" pollutes the Web with fake articles (Microsoft SPAM and fake "Linux" articles), whose win is it?
Links 29/01/2025: Data Privacy Day and Growing Tensions in Europe
Links for the day
Nazi Twitter (aka "X") Became a Troll Site That Lets People Buy a Blue Tick While Its Boss Actively Promotes Neonazi Politicians
the intellectual level of people who infest the Web through "Twitter" or "X"
This is Why They're So Afraid of Richard Stallman (He Tells People the Correct History)
Then they post about it to Microsoft's LinkedIn
Richard Stallman Speech in Bengaluru, "Silicon Valley of India"
62 years have passed since his "young nerd" days and he's still at it
Claim: Facebook Deletes Posts of IBM Red Hat Critics
As always, follow the money (advertisers)
Links 29/01/2025: Climate Crisis and "It’s time for the Xbox to fade away" (Microsoft Lose)
Links for the day
Links 29/01/2025: Buying Groceries During a Trade War, Political 'Retro'
Links for the day
More Illegal Patents at the EPO, Legality of Granted European Patents No Longer Matters to the Office
breaking the law for profit
Network Improvements Tomorrow
"Network maintenance" down in London
Sharing is Caring (But Advocating Copyleft Makes You a "Target")
GPLv3 does not close all the loopholes which the "Affero" helps close
Articles About Free Speech at Facebook
'Facebook vs Linux' story is now receiving a lot more media coverage
We Were Right About stallmansupport.org Making an Error by Joining Social Control Media. mastodon.social Suspends stallmansupport.org.
From what we can guess, accounts can be banned by some oversensitive admin or a mob of users ("bury brigades")
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews Still LLM Slop and SPAM Composed by LLMs (It's Basically a Spamfarm Disguised as a News Site)
Only a fool would visit BetaNews in search of actual news
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, January 28, 2025
The EPO's Corruption, If It Remains Untackled, Helps the Far Right and Enemies of European Unity/Solidarity
Do not negotiate with evil
The Web, Including Wikipedia, Gets Filled With Lies About Bill Gates, Added by Bill Gates and His PR Team
Of course Wikipedia is funded by Gates
Facebook Banning Linux Sites (or People Who Link to Linux Sites) is Another Symptom of the Web's Demise
The state of media on the Web is really bad; Social Control Media amplifies the badness, as Facebook serves to show
Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Neovim Telescope and Writing Less
Links for the day